Having dedicated a couple of years to researching a book about the history of Wentworth by the Sea Hotel, I thought I’d seen every photo ever taken of owners Margaret and James Barker Smith. But this one was new to me.
That’s Jim Smith in the white tuxedo, the host with the most. His wife Margaret, the driving force and financial manager of the 256-acre New Castle, NH summer resort, marina, and golf course is seated in the center. The Colorado couple bought the racially “exclusive” hotel after World War II in 1946. Launched in 1874 and expanded by Frank Jones in the 1890s, the Wentworth continued 32 years under the Smiths’ ownership. After two failed restarts in the early 1980s, the historic structure slowly deteriorated for two decades until it was saved in a $26 million reconstruction by Ocean Properties.
According to notes on the back of this photo, it depicts a fundraiser for Strawbery Banke Museum the summer it opened in 1965. Having buried myself in the museum archives at Strawbery Banke for another book, I should have recognized the event. After all, it was Jim Smith who hosted meetings of the Portsmouth Rotary at the couple’s Rockingham Hotel on State Street. The two seacoast institutions share a forgotten bond.
In 1958, JB Smith sponsored a speech by Richard Howland, president of the National Trust in Washington, D.C. Howland addressed a capacity crowd at the Rockingham in Portsmouth. Howland declared that it was time to stop tearing down historic Portsmouth buildings and start preserving them. Heritage tourism, Howland predicted, could be “a gold mine” for Portsmouth in the distant future. Preservation of the 10-acre South End museum began the following year in 1958.
Like other Portsmouth historic house museums, early fundraising at Strawbery Banke involved an endless cycle of charity tea parties, dinner parties, garden parties, and card parties. When a group of “high society” ladies of Rye, Kittery Point, and York offered to help with fundraising, the fledgling Strawbery Banke Board of Directors was initially suspicious and rejected their offer. Were the wealthy and elite ladies with their mink coats and fancy cars plotting to gain control of the grassroots organization? The gold mine, it turned out, would not benefit the historic sites, but the real estate agents, property managers, hoteliers, restaurant and shop owners who thrived in the cultural renaissance that followed.
At first “rejected and resentful,” the volunteer group of society locals formed their own independent nonprofit corporation called The Guild of Strawbery Banke. The women kicked in their own money and purchased items with a strawberry theme. They opened two gift shops, then juried and sold handmade strawberry crafts on consignment. They also copyrighted the name.
The late Cynthia Raymond, founder of the Guild and a long-time patron of Strawbery Banke, once told me about the early efforts of the Guild to support the new museum. Their first sale, she said, netted the group $67.54. One of the Guild ladies was assigned to be the banker for the group.
“She was so excited and thrilled with our success,” Raymond said, “that her big Cadillac ran off the road—fortunately not too far from her home. She didn’t dare leave the cash in the car, so she carried it home and told [her husband] about that before she told him about the car.”
Margaret Smith soon joined the Guild. The Smiths offered the group use of both the Rockingham and Wentworth by the Sea hotels for its fundraising events. The Guild of Strawbery Banke gift shops, auctions and events raised over $600,000 for the museum in three decades before disbanding in 1990.
Copyright J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.
Hillary Clinton Spotted at Yoken’s in 1992